Osun Election: CITAD Flags Moderate Digital Risks, Urges Parties to Fix Website Anomalies

The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has identified a moderate level of digital risk around the 2026 Osun State Governorship Election, while urging political parties to address persistent technical and accessibility problems affecting some of their official websites.

The findings are contained in the latest report of CITAD’s PAWSOM-MONITOR (Privacy Abuse, Websites and Social Media Monitor), which assessed the digital environment surrounding the election, including the night before the poll.

The monitoring exercise recorded 20,984 website checks across 15 political party websites. Overall, 80.58 per cent of the checks were successful, while the digital environment received a risk score of 41 out of 100, placing it within the moderate-risk category.

The latest assessment represents a slight improvement from the previous monitoring exercise conducted on August 8, 9 and 13, which recorded a 79.61 per cent success rate and the same risk score of 41/100. No incidents were recorded during that earlier assessment.

According to CITAD, the latest results indicate that the overall digital environment has remained relatively stable throughout the monitoring period, although some website anomalies require further investigation.

Of the 15 websites monitored, 10 were classified as operational, four as operational with anomalies, while one was classified as unreachable from the monitoring server.

APM Website Raises Concern

The website of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) recorded the most significant anomaly during the final verification period.

All three checks conducted on the website failed, with the monitoring system repeatedly returning an “isp_block_detected” result. Although the website returned HTTP response code 200 during the checks, PAWSOM-MONITOR classified it as “Unreachable From Monitor” with moderate confidence.

CITAD, however, cautioned against interpreting the finding as evidence of deliberate blocking.

“This finding does not by itself establish that the APM website was blocked or deliberately restricted,” the organisation said.

The Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) website was accessible during all three checks but was classified as “Operational With Anomalies.” The websites of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), and Zenith Labour Party were similarly classified as operational with anomalies and will require further human review.

In total, PAWSOM-MONITOR recorded 16,908 successful checks and 4,076 failed checks during the reporting period.

CITAD Calls for Stronger Digital Preparedness

CITAD is calling on political parties to take the availability, security and reliability of their official digital platforms more seriously and to promptly address technical concerns identified through the monitoring exercise.

The organisation also urged political parties and candidates preparing for the 2027 general elections, including those not covered by the current pilot exercise, to strengthen their websites and social media platforms ahead of the elections.

CITAD recommended that political parties establish mechanisms for the regular monitoring of their websites and official social media accounts to enable them to quickly identify and respond to outages, access restrictions, hacking attempts, impersonation, loss of account access and other technical or security threats.

Political parties and candidates were also advised to ensure that their official social media accounts are clearly identifiable and adequately protected against account takeover, impersonation and other forms of digital abuse.

No Confirmed Evidence of Censorship

CITAD stressed that the monitoring exercise did not establish any confirmed incident of deliberate censorship, politically motivated website blocking or external interference during the reporting period.

The organisation explained that the automated findings generated by PAWSOM-MONITOR are intended to identify signals that require further investigation and should not, on their own, be treated as evidence of responsibility for any disruption.

CITAD also clarified that PAWSOM-MONITOR is designed to go beyond monitoring the abuse of digital communication platforms belonging to political parties and candidates. One of its key objectives is to assess the extent to which political actors comply with the Nigeria Data Protection Act, particularly in the handling and use of voters’ personal data.

However, CITAD said the limited deployment period of less than one week for the Osun pilot meant that some of the platform’s planned functions were deferred to allow the organisation to focus on website monitoring.

Monitoring to Expand Ahead of 2027

CITAD said it plans to update and fully deploy PAWSOM-MONITOR over the coming weeks, with expanded monitoring of both the websites and social media accounts of political parties and candidates ahead of the 2027 general elections.

The expanded platform will also track the use of voters’ personal data and seek to identify possible cases of abuse or non-compliance with the Nigeria Data Protection Act in the context of elections.

CITAD said it would continue monitoring Nigeria’s digital electoral environment, with particular attention to website availability, possible access disruptions, DNS anomalies and other digital-rights concerns that could affect the ability of political parties, candidates and citizens to participate meaningfully in the country’s electoral processes.

Signed:
Yunusa Zakari Ya’u
Executive Director
Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD)